Santa Clara County is one of eight counties implementing the Voters’ Choice Act

Share this:

California counties are assessing the impact of a state order decertifying old and outdated voting machines that donÕt meet current security standards. (File photo by Michael Goulding, The Orange County Register/SCNG)

A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.

SAN JOSE — Santa Clara will join a small but growing number of California counties making sweeping changes to local elections, after the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ditch the traditional neighborhood polling place next year and instead provide fewer but larger voting centers open to any county resident where ballots can be cast days before the election.

The supervisors approved the change unanimously and with little fanfare near the end of a nine-hour meeting.

Starting with the March 2020 primary election, instead of casting a ballot at one of nearly 850 neighborhood polling places, voters will be able to go to any of 125 voting centers throughout the county. A fifth of those centers will be open 10 days before the election, the others three days before.

The voting centers each will be equipped with an electronic book that lets poll workers see whether a person has voted at any other location across the county or submitted a vote-by-mail ballot.

People who need a replacement ballot, or a ballot in another language, can have one printed for them on the spot. Every voter will also be automatically sent a vote-by-mail ballot, regardless of whether they signed up for one. They can also register to vote there at the last minute, where before they could only do so at a Registrar of Voters office before the election.

The change was allowed by the California Voter’s Choice Act, which aims to make it easier for voters to do their civic duty. San Mateo, Madera, Napa, Nevada and Sacramento counties already made the switch last year. In addition to Santa Clara, the counties of Fresno, Orange, Los Angeles and Mariposa will make the change next year too.

Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Shannon Bushey initially estimated the transition would cost $10.4 million a year, sparking concerns from some supervisors about the cost.

But on Tuesday, Bushey said that estimate has fallen to $7.7 million, or $2 million in one-time costs for outreach and $5.7 million in ongoing expenses during election years.

A number of facilities indicated they would provide voting space for free, cutting the estimated cost of renting voting sites in half, Bushey said. The registrar will use fewer seasonal workers and seek volunteers who would be paid stipends, reducing labor costs from $6 million to $2.8 million, she added.

In Contra Costa County, the supervisors mulled a similar change but backed off when the cost estimates came in and decided to focus instead on getting even more voters to cast their ballots by mail.

There are worries, however, that changing a long-standing system might confuse people and discourage them from voting.

Still, the counties that implemented the new model in November 2018 saw turnout increase by 12 to 19 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Santa Clara County Registrar’s staff; however, several counties statewide saw a spike in turnout.

Bushey said her office will form advisory groups to determine where the new voting centers should be located and how to draw more people who speak a language other than English.

Civic engagement groups that monitored the voting center transitions in San Mateo and Sacramento counties, including the League of Women Voters, Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Disability Rights California, said they are waiting for more data on the VCA before supporting or opposing the move, but cautioned it could exacerbate voting disparities among Asian and Latino voters

In a joint letter to the board, the groups cited data from the California Civic Engagement Project that showed 33 percent of the county’s eligible Asian American voters and 36 percent of eligible Latino voters cast a ballot in the last election, compared to 61 percent of non-Asian and non-Latino voters countywide.

In the five counties that piloted the transition in the June 2018 primary, Asian American and Latino turnout increased when compared to the June 2014 primary, but those increases lagged behind the overall turnout, according to the letter.

Strong and dedicated outreach efforts can overcome those issues, they wrote.

“But without these things, VCA implementation can make voting easier for regular voters and more inscrutable for everyone else,” the letter points out.

Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, who was supportive of the change overall, questioned whether 2020 is the right year to make such a dramatic change.

“We have so much going on next year and there are so many things happening at once,” she said. “If I were directing the vote, I’d wait until 2022 to do this, but if you all have more confidence than I do that we can be successful in 2020, then I will sign on as well.”

Thy Vo covers government in Santa Clara County and the city of Santa Clara for The Mercury News. She's a Southern California native and started her journalism career watchdogging local government in Orange County, California for the nonprofit news website Voice of OC.

The rule announced by the administration of President Donald Trump in June would allow health care institutions and many types of workers to refuse services on religious grounds and would deny federal health, welfare and education funds to state and local governments that don't comply.